Words are hieroglyphic in the poetry of Dr Gunjan Agarwal and her poetic debut Symphony of Soul is a huge testimony to this. Henry Thomas Buckle once said,“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” In her poetry Dr Gunjan Agarwal discusses ideas and she gives importance to it above everything. It makes her poems appear conversational. She locates the symphony deep down in her soul and in her poems she speaks her heart. In her poetic debut,Symphony of Soul she comes out with a bouquet of lyrical poems written as a conversation with herself. Piety is a recurrent note in them and yet the social focus is never missing. A conversation poem is a style of poetry that addresses someone close to the poet in an informal way. These poems use serious language and usually discuss a specific topic. Dr Gunjan Agarwal did not write conversation poems as a genre that was earlier used by 19th century British poets like Coleridge or Wordsworth. But her conversational style in Symphony of Soul is quite heart touching for its crystal clarity. It is a collection of fifty prosaic lyrics incorporating various moments of life one forgets in the hustle bustle of life. Eureka Publication published this book in December 2022 and the book is available in Philippines and Malaysia too. Interestingly enough the book is dedicated first to Lord Krishna. In her Preface Dr. Gunjan focuses on “the blend of the material and the spiritual” and hopes that the symphony of her creativity “will sooth like a balm and work like a mirror in which all will find their own reflection. There are fifty poems in the volume. The concluding poem is like a hymn: “Thou art with me in weal and woe/ Sometimes in the moment of broken heart / Shattered into pieces, one by one all my desires/My helplessness, my wretched subdued voice” The poem reminds us of Hopkins and his deep piety. However, in the Poem No 47 the poet sings the glory of home, home, sweet home. “Home is the place /You are welcome always/Brick and stone walls/ Or a household item” In one poem -- No 8 -- she depicts the image of modern man: “A practical modern man / Striving to maintain poise, multitasking and test of harmony /Race of dwarfs chasing ideal /Searching day by day, broken bruised self”. The Arnoldian touch in the image is quite interesting and the futile search in the wasteland.
Dr Gunjan searches in her poems as in her life, “a balance between pain and pleasure” – the Aristotelian ‘golden mean’ in modern life of the middle-class men as in poem No 10. Her poems do not have any separate title and the whole poem has a titular flavour. Searching for Perfection is the theme of the poem No11 where the poet imagines “Leading towards a new land/Flooded with ashes of thwarted hopes/Nowhere!Nowhere!” In this poem she regards search for perfection as ‘a wild goose chase” Some romantic touches are there though fewer and rarer as in poem No 13 “The brush I find on my upper arm/ Melts all bitter reminiscences, dissolving by and by/The eyes sparkling with mad rapture/gliding my hands all over to ensure you/Yes you are there only for me” Throughout the poems in this volume there is an untold emptiness and barrenness and the sonorous silence of an agonized soul. But she searches for the refuge in Divinity and fancifully consoles herself, “Divinity descends to make our souls united / Transforming us into a beautiful golden monuments”. These are wonderful moments of divine ecstasy and there seems to be a sincerity even in spite of the pain. The metaphysical upsurge is quite interesting in Poem 15 on Ma Ganga. Where she prays so ardently, “Ma Ganga!Engulf me within your strong grip /Let us not resist the call of eternity/Nature is restoring the faded glory”. This is a positive note which a pious mind feels. One has to face numberless moments of sorrow and happiness where one’s utterance gives voice to the unstructured feelings and emotions already existing in mind and when a new idea comes into the mind a new concoction in the form of a poem is very obvious.
Dr Gunjan gets scanty time for her poetic creativity as she is at present Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Languages, Shobhit University,Gangoh She began her career as Lecturer, Lovely Professional University Phagwara- Jalandhar and later she worked in Swami Vivekananda SubhartiUniversity, Meerut, UP and also worked as Professor and Head, MMUniversity,Mullana, Haryana Though she is out and out an academician with afunda of research , spontaneity takes an upper place in her thinking. Here in some poems conversational style can be seen where a beloved and a lover may be symbolic of Divinity or Temporal --they express themselves and open the deepest layers of their heart. On one side an innocent expression of a daughter can be found when she recalls dark black eyes of her mother on the other side contemporary aspect of the cruelty of male dominated society has been depicted. Affection is never affliction for her. She is in an ecstatic tone while she writes on parents and members of the family. There are sorrowful moments but the sunny glitter overcomes the darkness of agony in most of the poems. At times readers may think that Dr Gunjan is engrossed in rational thinking. But it is through the rational that she delves deeper and beyond. Einstein once remarked, “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking”.Something like this happened in her poems. In a recently written poem she takes the readers to such a rational conversation -- /Let's talk something today/Neither mine nor yours/Even if it is a lie, be a little serious/Let's behave./Neither teach nor complain/No happiness no sorrow/No question no answer/No long stayof screaming silence.
The anthology opens with a deep yearning of the poet’s heart blends material and spiritual and concludes with a prayer in which Almighty plays different roles egfather, brother and a friend. The collection of poems is a mundane journey that takes one to the spiritual destination and this is an effort to remodel life’s different untold, unsolved aspects rooted deep down in one’s psyche. The analytical nature of the poems adds a profundity to the connotation. Dr Gunjan transcends the limit of the temporal thinking and reaches out to divinity in some of her poems.
Dr Gunjan is a bilingual poet. She writes excellently in Hindi and they are spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Dr.Gunjan loves silence even in her words: You! without any name and figure/Dwelling peacefully in my imagination /Silence nurtured our bond... /Closed the door long ago without uttering /A single word.” After reading her poetry one feels that poetry is indebted to religion for its largest and loftiest inspirations, and religion is indebted to poetry for its subtlest and most luminous interpretations. Religion is related to poetry as life is related to art. Religion is life, the life of God in the soul of man—the response of man’s spirit to the attractions of the divine Spirit
Dr Ratan Bhattacharjee, an International Visiting faculty and Trilingual poet and columnist may be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com